Fashoda Incident
Fashoda Incident
(fəshō`də), 1898, diplomatic dispute between France and Great Britain. Toward the end of the 19th cent., while Britain was seeking to establish a continuous strip of territory from Cape Town to Cairo, France desired to establish an overland route from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. To make good their claim the French dispatched (May 1, 1897) Major J. B. MarchandMarchand, Jean Baptiste, 1863–1934, French explorer and general. Sent to Africa (1897) to establish French control of the headwaters of the White Nile, Marchand led a heroic trek through uncharted terrain.
..... Click the link for more information. with a small force from Brazzaville, in the face of a British warning. After crossing over 2,000 mi (3,200 km) of almost unexplored wilderness, Marchand reached (July 10, 1898) the village of Fashoda (now KodokKodok
, formerly Fashoda
, town, NE South Sudan, on the White Nile. In 1898 it was the scene of the Fashoda Incident, which brought Britain and France to the brink of war and resulted, in 1899, in an Anglo-French agreement establishing the frontier between Sudan and
..... Click the link for more information. ) on the Nile in the S Sudan (now in NE South Sudan). Beating off a Mahdist attack, he stopped there to await an expected Franco-Ethiopian expedition from the east. Meanwhile, Lord Kitchener's Anglo-Egyptian army had defeated (Sept. 2) the Mahdists in the N Sudan. When he heard of the French activities, Kitchener led forces upriver to Fashoda and, despite Marchand's presence, claimed (Sept. 19) the town for Egypt. The French government resisted for a time, but, fearing war, ordered its mission to withdraw on Nov. 3. In Mar., 1899, France yielded its claim to the upper Nile region and accepted part of the Sahara as compensation.